Indoor Hunting: the Stepping Stone for Developing Romantic Endeavors
by bellagill92
Summary: It was thanks to the local fauna, in a way, that Erza Scarlet and Jellal Fernandes came to realize that some rules just ended up outliving their usefulness.


**A/N: This one-shot is dedicated to the flying blood-sucking creature that spent two days feasting on me and hooking me on anti-histamine last week and met its end between the wall and my old French text book. Thank you for the inspiration. You will not be forgotten in death.**

 **Also, there are references to The Rollercoaster and Nutrition 101. Vague ones, mostly. Enjoy!**

It was one of those odd moments of awakening, the one that pulled Jellal Fernandes from sleep one hot summer night.

One moment, he had been enjoying a rather refreshing session of sleep, the other he was awake and unsure of why that was the case. He certainly wasn't lacking in bleariness…and in fact, said bleariness was tempting him to just close his eyes again and go back to sleep. Something was nagging him, though… a feeling… like there had been a reason for him to wake up and he just couldn't quite… recall it. Maybe it was a dream… possibly a sound… who knew? It just felt somewhat… important, and he just couldn't bring himself to go to sleep without figuring it out.

Or course, the process of figuring it out wasn't that easy – as always, the gray space between sleeping and wakefulness was completely empty in his memory. Odds were, he was just overthinking and it had, in fact, been the heat waking him up. The room was sweltering and the air around him felt incredibly muggy. In fact, he felt like he might melt if he didn't air out the place, which prompted him to get out of bed to open the window a little.

It was as he was on the process of doing so that he heard it. _Thump_. The sound of something falling down upstairs. He looked up and raised an eyebrow – it sounded like Erza was up and about too. For a moment, he wondered if it had been the sounds of her moving around doing things that had woken him up… he actually felt tempted to leave the room and go upstairs to see if she needed something. But then, he shook his head… too forward. No doubt it would disturb the balance of their living arrangements as housemates who just happened to be cultivating a romantic relationship. Things were developing well for the moment but, if people's warnings were to be believed, it might become really awkward really fast and that was the last thing they needed or wanted.

So, yes, leaving her to do whatever she was doing was probably the best idea…

… or so he thought up until he heard another _thump_ of something heavy falling onto the floor… and then something being dragged… and then a third object hitting the floor and breaking noisily.

He blinked.

Was she moving furniture up there? Their move into the house was still rather… recent… maybe… did two months count as recent? Still, Erza was a person of whims, so it wasn't that far-fetched that she would suddenly decide to try a completely different furniture setup in her room all of a sudden, and knowing how impatient she was… well, putting herself to work at – he paused, glancing at the alarm clock – twelve-past-one in the morning didn't surprise him one bit.

Again, thinking of that new development, he wondered if he should go upstairs and offer her his help. Her furniture was shockingly heavy, he had come to realize upon helping moving it upstairs and it couldn't be easy to rearrange it under that heat, even for someone like Erza who most certainly did not lack in strength.

In the midst of his thinking, something else broke upstairs, but that time the sound of shattering was accompanied by Erza's voice. _"Why won't you just die, fiend?! You have no place in this house!"_

His widened. _What?!_ An intruder?!

And just like that, any doubt about going straight to Erza vanished as he rushed out of the room and then up the stairs. Without even thinking he reached for the doorknob as soon as he got close enough to the door and burst in without a warning.

What he found was… chaos. Utter chaos. The first thing that caught his attention was the half dozen swords sticking out of the walls. As if that wasn't enough, Erza's wide, four-poster bed had been somehow dragged into the middle of the room, where it remained tilted sideways as if working as a barricade. Erza was crouching by it, in the midst of shards of a broken lamp and what used to be a vase, which didn't pierce her skin simply because she was wearing full armor. When she saw him standing there, though, she shot him an anxious look and for a moment he thought that it might have been a mistake to come.

"What are you doing, Jellal?!" she demanded. "Either get in or get out – just close the door before that… that _thing_ escapes!"

He obeyed immediately, making his way in and shutting the door as commanded before he could even think. It was only after he made his way to Erza's barricade tiptoing through broken pieces of glass and china that her words registered. "What is going on, Erza? Do we have an intruder? Is it that… that _thing_ you were referring to?" Why was she calling it a thing? Was it not human?

"Yes. I am unsure as to how it got in, but it has proven quite the stealthy foe thus far," she whispered, looking over the edge of her bed-barricade.

"But… where is it, then?" In the midst of all that destruction, he couldn't sport a third person (or even creature) in the room along with them.

"Shh…" she hushed him, closing her eyes. "Listen."

He blinked. Listen? Could it be that said intruder had some sort of… invisibility magic? He was about to ask her so, but just as he opened her mouth to do so, Erza's eyes snapped open and pointed in some random direction.

"There!"

He only had the time to look where she was pointing and spot what seemed to be a black dot on the wall for a second before Erza summoned yet another sword and sent it flying that way. He winced as it created yet another dent on the wall and, after that, there was a long moment of silence… or rather, almost silence, as he could hear a very vague buzzing sound on the background.

"Blast, it escaped again!" Erza cursed.

"Erza… what exactly are you trying to kill?"

Once more, she hushed him. "Quiet. Let it land."

Let it _what_? It also flew now?! What sort of creature was that?

She was looking around, following the buzzing, her eyes narrowed to slits. And then, all of a sudden, her eyes were fixed on a stretch of wall, as if a bullseye was drawn right there. At the center of it, there it was again: the black dot. "You think you can hide from me?" she hissed under her breath, starting to summon another sword as she walked around the bed, towards it. "Think again. Your days are counted."

Confused Jellal followed after her in an attempt to identify their opponent… and just as he finally did, he was rather… dumfounded.

"Erza…" he called. "Is that… a mosquito?"

"… flying, parasitic abomination…" she mumbled under her breath, approaching it threateningly.

He blinked. No. No. That couldn't be. Surely, it couldn't. "Please tell me you did not just trash your entire room in the process of trying to kill a bug, Erza," he begged in whisper.

At that, Erza stopped walking towards the bug and turned on her heel, giving him an extremely affronted look.

"A bug?" she hissed under her breath, glaring at him. "You dare calling that… that _thing_ a mere _bug_?"

"Well, mosquitos do fall in the general category of flying insec…"

"It's a blood-sucking monster! Look what it did to me!" And with that, she requipped one of her gauntlets away and showed him her arm.

"Oh my _God_ , Erza!" Ravaged would be one way to describe it. In just one second of observation, he counted at least ten different, painful-looking sting marks. And it didn't end there. It would be bad enough if it was just normal mosquito stings, but by the looks of it, her arm had already swollen quite a bit and hives were starting to appear, in the midst of angry red lines. "I think you're having some sort of reaction to the bites… there's some allergy medication downstairs – you should really take some before this gets worse. And have you been scratching your arm? You can't do that, Erza. It will only make it worse!"

"It itches Jellal! If I don't scratch it I will go insane!" she shouted before turning back around and, in a single moment of sudden fury, running towards the wall with a war cry and attempting to stab the insect… which, expectedly, flew away, leaving yet another pointless dent on the wall. It seemed like, at that point, worrying about oncoming insanity was useless

"Erza! What are you doing?!"

"Protecting the world from danger! I will not rest while this… this _bringer of disease_ is no more!" And, with that, she requiped into a particularly threatening set of armor and a sword so large it would probably just go right through the wall as soon as she aimed it.

Alright, that had to stop. At that rate, they would be homeless by dawn.

"Erza, put that thing away," he said, in a calm, yet commanding tone.

She looked at him with a glare. "Are you defending that miserable being, Jellal? Are you picking it over _me?!_ "

"What? No!" he replied. Was she being serious? "But this is not how you get rid of an insect!"

For a moment, there was a pause. "It isn't?"

" _No!_ Haven't you ever faced a mosquito before?"

"Not _indoors_. Fairy Hills is surrounded by runes that repel plagues of all sorts, from bed bugs to flying bloodsucking beasts like this one. It seems I will need as Freed for a little help with that."

He sighed. "Well, I guess that's fair enough, but, for the record, a sword is probably the worst sort of weapon for you to use against a mosquito. They're just too small and fast for it to cut them. _"_

She narrowed her eyes. "What do you suggest, then? My weapon collection goes far beyond swords. If you think a crossbow or a flail would be more appropriate…"

He felt like bashing his own head on the wall. Oh, _Erza…_ She just couldn't help going overboard, could she? "I think you can put all the classic weaponry away." Especially the flail… God knew what sort of damage that would do to the house. "The sort of thing that would work on a mosquito is a little less… obvious."

She frowned. "Less… obvious," she said skeptically. "Like a dart? Booby traps?"

"No… just…" he sighed and covered his face for a moment. "Would it terribly offend you if I just took over this… hunt?"

The redhead shot him a slightly skeptical look. "Well, I don't usually appreciate having my battles fought for me, but I suppose that, given your expertise, I could accept it this one time and take it for a learning experience…"

"I wouldn't call myself an actual expert, but if it works for you… let me just…" he paused, looking around the room for something useful and his eyes landed on the previous week's issue of Sorcerer's Weekly, featuring none other than Mira on the cover. He walked across the room to get it and then showed it to her. "Do you need this?"

"No. I have already finished reading it. Why?"

"You'll see. Now, where did that thing land this time?"

"I didn't see. I was distracted."

Her declaration prompted the beginning of a thorough search, in which they inspected every single open surface in the room, only to find no sign of the sneaky insect for close to ten minutes. It was only when Erza approached the window and slightly moved the curtains that the wretched 'winged vermin' (as she so colorfully put it) came flying out of it, finally allowing them to follow its path towards its landing spot.

And just as it did land, right on Erza's dresser, Jellal started rolling up the magazine.

"What are you planning to do with that?" Erza skeptically asked. "Are you planning to hit it with that? Because using a magazine for such a purpose just seems silly, Jellal. If you really want to hit it with something, I have a perfectly respectable selection of clubs…"

 _Whack!_ And, with that, the mosquito met its end, squished between the wood of the dresser and Mirajane Strauss's face on the magazine cover.

"There. It's gone," Jellal declared. "Your arm is avenged."

Erza blinked. "Just like that?" she mumbled.

"Just like that," he confirmed.

"Are you _sure_ it is dead?"

He showed her what remained of the insect on the magazine and she made a face. "Well, I doubt I would be able to find a pulse if it was alive, but judging by the look of it, I would go with a 'yes'…"

She blinked some more, unable to take the simplicity of the task when taken over by Jellal. Just like that, she found herself looking left… and then right… the destruction around her never quite fading from view.

"What on Earthland have I done to my room?" she uttered in a whisper.

Jellal sighed. _Now_ she noticed.

* * *

"It still itches," she mumbled, pouting at her arm not ten seconds after she had downed the allergy medication that was supposed to relieve the itching and general swelling on her arm.

"You need to wait a little longer. Medication takes a while to kick in," he admitted as he stood at the sink, washing the spoon he had just used to give her some medicine in the form of syrup. When he turned around to see what she was up to after a few seconds, he spotted her hand already edging towards her arm with clear scratching intent. "Erza, don't! You'll break the skin and get an infection."

"But it itches!" she complained, before grimacing bitterly. "I hate bugs. Especially bloodsucking ones. The nerve of them! Feeding on people without permission…"

"I can understand your frustration… but you still can't scratch," he admonished. "Is it really that bad?"

" _Yes!"_ she stressed.

He sighed. "There's something I could try. I'm not sure how well it will work when you have hives and everything but… it might help a little."

"Well, then what are you waiting for? Do it!"

She didn't even ask what it was, he noted, and was touched by the level of trust that entailed. Turning back to the sink, he reached for the spoon he had just washed but then, hesitating, turned back to look at her arm. Maybe he would need something bigger than a spoon…

From her seat, Erza watched it as he reached down into the cupboard under the sink and pulled what seemed to be a frying pan out. She could only raise an eyebrow as he ran it under hot water for a few minutes before bringing it over, wondering what he was up to, although she refrained from asking him about it.

"Can you stretch your arm?" he requested as he joined her at the table.

She did so immediately, turning the utterly red and swollen side of her arm up for him to do whatever he intended with it.

"This is hot," he warned her. "Not hot enough to burn you but still hot. I'll have to put it on your arm for a few minutes. Is that okay?"

She nodded. "Go on."

He did just that, touching her arm with the underside of the pan. She winced a little at first, given how sensitive her skin was at the time, but then realized that he was right about it not being hot enough to actually burn – not that it took the unpleasantness away, in any case. Still, the moment she had flinched, his hand (the one that wasn't holding the pan) had immediately reached for hers in an attempt to soothe her. Afterwards, as they sat at the table with their fingers softly entwined, he still didn't let go, just looking away with a blush on his cheeks… Erza wasn't doing much better herself.

"So," she spoke after about a minute of silence that was beginning to become awkward. "What… what is the science behind this… technique? With the frying pan, I mean."

"I'm not sure," he said, finally meeting her eye, though only tentatively. "I never got around researching it. It's just something that was done to me whenever I got bitter by bugs as a child. It was usually with a spoon, though, but then again I never got bitten to this degree. I'm not sure if it will do anything for the allergy, but it always relieved the itch around the stings for me, so maybe it will help."

Erza nodded silently. She knew better than to try and pry further on that matter – whenever a conversation reached a theme that was somewhat related to their lives before the tower, the general rule was to tread lightly.

She found herself sighing as she silently looked at him holding the pan atop her arm with one hand and at then at their hands laced together just past it. Unconsciously, she squeezed her own under his, causing him to look up, blush again, and then look away.

His reaction amused her somewhat. He was always so bashful and tentative, even when it came down to simple hand-holding, an action to be perfectly casual from a couple openly dating, such as themselves. Even now, after he had just witnessed the peak of her insanity.

That thought took her amusement away immediately, replacing it with a certain degree of embarrassment. To think of the mess she had made upstairs… Sometimes she surprised even herself with her own antics – she wasn't altogether thick, after all. Of course, by the time that happened, it was usually too late to do anything about it, so she'd just brush it off for the sake of pride. Still, she had to wonder what sort of impression it left on Jellal. He hadn't bolted so far, which was always a good sign, but still… she felt like she should address the matter. At least once.

"I'm sorry about before… the mess I made out of my room," she found herself mumbling.

He looked at her and, seemingly unfazed, shook his head. "It's okay. We'll just clean it up and everything will be as good as new in a few hours," he reassured her. Now that the shock had worn off, he had already had the time to rationalize it all and start planning. "Well… almost everything, anyway. I don't think there's any hope for your lamp and the vase… and we might need a hand from Laki in what comes to covering the dents on the wood of the walls, but other than that, it should all be fine. Just… try not to go so overboard with the sharp weapons next time."

She stared at him for a long moment. "That's it?"

He raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"Doesn't it bother you even a little?" she found herself asking.

He looked up, frowning. "What?"

"Me… my… _God_ ," she said, sighing out of frustratiom. "I am aware that sometimes I can be a little… intense… in a peculiar sort of way."

"What? Erza…"

"Don't act like you have not noticed it," she said before he could brush it off. "You _must_ have. I mean, you have seen before how I act like when I am drunk… and I could tell how horrified you were the day after you moved in and realized that I had been eating ice-cream for breakfast every other day for _years_ without it even occurring to me that such a thing might not be very… beneficial for my health. But afterwards it didn't seem to annoy you one bit. It still doesn't every time I fight you tooth and nail whenever you slave over the kitchen trying to feed me something healthy…" she looked away, blushing "… in a way that I might have described as 'disgracefully childish', had I seen it on somebody else. So, doesn't this really… put you off me at all?"

He blinked, looking quite stunned. "How can you even ask that when you know the things you accepted me despite of?"

She gaped. "This is not a matter of reciprocity, Jellal! Just because you feel guilty about things and grateful that I accept you despite them, that shouldn't obligate you to put up with every stunt that I pull! That is not… that is not fair to you! At all!"

Immediately, he shook his head. "No, no. I… I really didn't mean it like that, Erza. I don't just _blindly_ accept everything you do by default, Erza – if I did, I would have just let you go on your merry way eating sweets for breakfast lunch and dinner. What I meant is…" he paused, sighing for a moment "… I meant that you, better than anyone, should know about being willing to accept people with all the luggage that comes attached to them. And for the record, your quirks are not something I… they're not something I like you _despite_ of. They… they express how passionate you are about things… even if it is in a strange way sometimes. And that passion is one of the things I admire the most in you, so…"

"… so you like it that I'm… weird?"

"Well… as long as you're not damaging your heath in the process, like was the case with the ice-cream… But as for the rest… those things are part of you and I… I… l-love you. E-everything, I mean… so… why wouldn't I love them too?" he said, stumbling his way through the words as he spoke them.

She felt the color on her cheeks deepening. It might have been a clumsy declaration and it hardly brought her any news, if she was being honest, but the way he had put it and made an effort to describe just how unconditional his feelings were for her… it meant far more than words could describe. It made her… gooey inside… and tingly. It made her want to do things to him. Badly. Like kissing him… which she shouldn't do in the house, as per their no-romance-at-home rules…

Why did those rules exist again? Something about… awkwardness?

…oh, screw it! What was even the point when they were already a couple?

On him seat, Jellal was startled by how abruptly she pulled her hand off his, leaving him holding the frying pan over nothing with his other hand. He barely had the chance to put it down before he felt her hands cupping his face, his eyes widening just as her lips touched his. It was about two seconds before he unfroze from his shock and finally responded, still mildly surprised by the action. It wasn't like it was the first time she kissed him – they were dating now, after all. And there had, of course, been several times in between, but not quite as often as one would think. Maybe it was just their personality or a mutual fear of scaring each other away, but at that point in their relationship, they were… well, relatively chaste when it came to obvious displays of affection – especially in their home, which was, allegedly, neutral territory for the sake of peaceful cohabitation. So, really, his surprise could not be deemed as utterly out of place under the circumstances.

The kiss didn't last very long, but the tentative, tender sweetness of it made up for the shortness. Afterwards, she just sat there looking very red, facing anywhere but the specific stretch of space he occupied and he simply blinked. Repeatedly, unable to locate his voice in order to utter any word whatsoever.

Once he finally was able to put his vocal chords to use, the words came in stutters. "I… didn't the rule say we weren't s-supposed to…?"

"You can't say things like that and expect me not to kiss you!" Erza replied, sounding just a tad annoyed.

"Oh," he mumbled, blushing a little. "Should I… apologize?"

She looked away, seeming flustered. Idiot. As if he was to blame for being sweet… "N-no! You didn't do anything wrong." And then, there was an extended moment of silence before she said the rest. "We should end it."

His eyes widened. _End it?!_ " _What_?"

Immediately, she realized that she had been misunderstood. "I meant the rule, not… not everything else! God, Jellal! You're not getting rid of me so easily!"

"Oh… that's… that is… good."

She sighed, shaking her head for a moment before settling down. "This rule made sense at first," she admitted, speaking in a more serious tone. "This living arrangement was unorthodox. We were still getting to know each other all over again and there was a wide potential for awkwardness with us living together while that happened, which was the last thing we needed at the time, but… but…" How should she put it? Something had changed – it definitely had. She just couldn't quite find the words to describe what. That was, until it hit her life a brick. Of course. "Now you love me when I'm weird… and I love you when you try to sneak carrots and peas into my plate and withstand my hatred by refusing to give me dessert until I eat them all… do you understand what I mean?"

He blinked. That was an utterly ridiculous sentence if he had ever heard one. And yet, at the same time, coming from her those words felt like they said one hundred times more about them than a simple declaration of mutual love. "Yes," he said softly. "I think I do." And it was almost… overwhelming.

She seemed relieved that her explanation had gotten through him. "I… I am not saying our relationship needs to start moving at lightening speed from now on, or that you…" she paused, her face becoming extremely red as she said so "…you need to leave your room and move into mine immediately… but… I think this means that we have already grown past that rule… don't you think so?"

"When you put it like that, the rule does sound a bit… excessive," he admitted.

"So… shall we seal the end of it with a kiss?" she suggested.

He couldn't help but chuckle, even of a bit nervous. "Well, that does sound very fitting right now."

So, in response, she got to her feet and gave him her hand, prompting him to take it and do the same. But rather than initiating the kiss right away, he focused on her arm instead.

"Oh, I almost forgot about the stings. Is the itching still bothering you?"

Itching? What itching? Her mind had been so focused elsewhere that she had forgotten all about it as well – a good sign, in all. She gave her arm a look and… well, it did still look pretty red and swollen. But as for how it felt, the itching was much, much less pronounced. The urge to scratch was nowhere near as strong and it was already hard for her to pinpoint where exactly she had been stung just basing herself on the feeling of it alone. "Not nearly as much as before," she told him with a smile. "Thank you." He was always good at that. Taking care of her. But then, gathering herself, she cleared her throat. "Now, I think we were in the middle of something."

"Oh, right," he mumbled nervously. The kissing.

It occurred to Erza that maybe his reaction was a clear sign that the rule needed to go – if he sounded so sheepish about them kissing, Mavis knew that must mean they didn't do it nearly enough, which no-doubt needed to be corrected, given that her plans for the future she intended to share with him involved _far more_ than mere kissing… But that time she was the one blushing at her own naughtier thoughts. _All in due time…_ she told herself.

Her arms reached up to wrap themselves around his neck, pulling his face down, closer to hers. She closed her eyes and tilted her face sideways just a bit as she felt a puff of his breath hitting her on the face, readying herself for the meeting of their lips.

And then… _bzzz_.

Erza pushed him back just as their lips were millimeters apart. "Jellal, did you hear that?"

"What?"

 _Bzzz_ …

"There's another one!" she shouted, already rushing towards the coffee table, where several old magazines were resting. "This one is not escaping me!"

He just groaned.

Exactly one minute and twenty-eight seconds passed before he heard the sound of glass breaking.

Such was the love in that house…

 **The End**


End file.
